Summary
A critical vulnerability has been identified in Adobe Reader 9.1 and Acrobat 9.1 and earlier versions. This vulnerability (CVE-2009-1492) would cause the application to crash and could potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system. A second vulnerability has also been reported that appears to affect Adobe Reader for UNIX only (CVE-2009-1493).

Severity rating
Adobe categorizes this as a critical update and recommends that users apply the update for their product installations.

A critical vulnerability has been identified in Adobe Reader 9.1 and Acrobat 9.1 and earlier versions. This vulnerability (CVE-2009-1492) would cause the application to crash and could potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system. A second vulnerability has also been reported that appears to affect Adobe Reader for UNIX only (CVE-2009-1493). These issues are remotely exploitable.

Adobe recommends users of Acrobat and Adobe Reader update their product installations to versions 9.1.1, 8.1.5, or 7.1.2 using the instructions above to protect themselves from potential vulnerabilities. Adobe expects to make available Adobe Reader 7 and Acrobat 7 updates for Macintosh before the end of June. This document will be updated to specify the expected date of these updates once available.

FYI. Be aware that the Acrobat 8.1.5 update "optimizes performance" during installation. What that means is: adding Reader_sl.exe (Adobe Reader Speed Launcher) to your Start-up programs, which I have always disabled, without noticing any slowdown when opening up Reader.

FYI. Be aware that the Acrobat 8.1.5 update "optimizes performance" during installation. What that means is: adding Reader_sl.exe (Adobe Reader Speed Launcher) to your Start-up programs, which I have always disabled, without noticing any slowdown when opening up Reader.